Benefits from U.K-France defense pacts will require trust and deep restructuring

The British and French governments will negotiate defense cooperation treaties which will be designed, according to the Guardian newspaper, "to maximise each nation's military capabilities while saving money." The two countries will hope to achieve savings in nuclear weapons testing, aircraft pilot training, aircraft carrier utilization, submarine technologies, unmanned systems, satellite communication, and other areas.

Technology-sharing can provide one side or the other with a beneficial short-cut that it would not otherwise have had. But if the two governments wish to achieve substantial cost savings from cooperation -- which would translate into greater military power than they would otherwise be able to afford -- the two sides will have to agree on how to use specialization and economies of scale to their mutual advantage. This would mean, for example, the British specializing in submarine production with the French specializing in armored vehicle production. But in order to get specialization and economies of scale to work, both sides will have to acquire very high levels of trust in the other. Just as difficult, each side will have to be —to arrange the demise of certain politically-influential but uncompetitive defense industries in order to achieve the benefits of specialization and economies of scale in those capabilities that each does best.

Both governments feel the financial pressure to get more military capability out of increasingly scarce defense funding. Both sides may also feel the need to diversify away from excessive reliance on the United States for security. But the major benefits from this effort at cooperation will take many years to arrive. Each side will have to slay important and influential industries and learn to "trust his life" to the other. Neither will be easy nor will happen any time soon, if ever.